Dark Scribe Starts
by Mariagoner
Summary: It would begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous... Batman/Little Women Crossover. Jo/Laurie.
1. Chapter 1

A few points, before launching into perhaps the strangest fic I've ever worked on so far.

1. Yes, this is a Batman/Little Women crossover. It all began when I ran across a viewing of Batman Begins a few days past, thought Laurie sure did look fetching in a cowl, pictured Jo as an awesome comic-book version of Nellie Bly, and was so taken by the idea that I had to do _something_ with it while I was still enjoying Spring Break. So essentially, Jo is taking the place of Rachel Dawes, Theodore Laurence is (of course) serving as the Dark Knight, with the rest of the supporting cast taking on various other roles.

2. Yes, this probably could serve as proof that I'm completely insane, especially given the fact that I decided to write an action/adventure _Little Women_ fic. But c'mon. Wouldn't seeing Laurie kick some righteous ass and Jo pistol-whip some bad-guys be completely and utterly awesome crack? Even if I do have to occasionally come up with some outlandish anachronisms and comic-book logic to justify it? ;)

3. No, I can give you no assurances that this fic will continue on to a definite end. I would _like_ it to and knowing that people are reading-- especially through reviews, hint, hint ;)-- would help a great deal but this could end up being yet another abandoned WIP from me. I hope not but if you like the story... please review. It would really help in writing!

In any case, without further do...

**Title: Dark Scribe, Chapter 1  
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins  
Series: Dark Scribe Begins  
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast, with Jo taking Rachel Dawes' Role and Laurie standing in for the Dark Knight  
Rating: R  
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...  
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.**

* * *

In the line of work she had fallen into half a decade after she'd thrown down the mantle of fiction writer, Miss Josephine March-- formerly of Conchord, Massachusetts and now stationed in gritty New York City for the foreseeable future-- often thought of herself as being a kind of glorified courier service.

Of course, a lot of people would have disagreed with that statement, saying that much of what she did to expose the lies propping the world of politics and police business often amounted to high treason, keeping on the good side of the law merely because of a close and personal relationship with one of the wealthiest and most powerful men who made New York his home. But frankly, Miss March-- better known as Jo-- always preferred to think of her current line of work as simply taking the words from the high-and-mighty (or criminal-yet-untouchable) and breaking them into manageable enough pieces of bull-pockey so that the average poor grunt on the street could have some idea about what the bloody hell was being done on any given day to screw up their world.

Some people called her nosy. Others called her by considerably more colorful adjectives. But Jo liked to think of herself as simply a gatherer of facts; one who had a privileged position over many others, naturally, but one who was always happy to share whatever she discovered with the world via printing press and an acid tongue.

And so, life being the chaotic mess it so often was when she was immersed in it, she decided to try and sort the facts of the morning neatly in her mind before running to any conclusions.

Fact one: This day had begun like near any other day she had spent in her last five years at her home in New York, the one she shared with her equally artistic spinster sister and their equally marriage-less friend.

Fact two: For upwards of an hour, the events of the day had gone just as planned.

She had woken up. She had attempted to roll over. She had glared dazedly at the ceiling when her body refused to move. She had once more attempted to roll over. She had cursed when she finally realized that her cat had been napping on top of her the whole time. She had tossed her cat off the bed. She then finally managed _to_ roll over. She had gotten out of bed. She had sighed at the time in her bedroom clock. She had cursed as she had calculated the shortening distance between the day and her next deadline. She had shuffled into her slippers. She had walked to her kitchen. She had sat on the table there. She had then tapped a pen against a pad of paper while she tried to figure out what Mayor Willoby "I've Got Something Firm Lodged Up My" Bottom might be thinking in regards to trying to pass that new bill on raising taxes for docking sailors. She had wondered where the hell her tea pot had went. She had wondered if the neighbors had to be bribed to bring it back. She had finally decided that perhaps it was some evil governmental scheme to deprive the good American people of free press by stealing the caffeine of the good-hearted journalists who worked against their plots and groused about rousing her sister Amy to help her fix up something decent.

Fact three: Right after she completed that thought, she had been nearly _hit upside her head_ with a rock that had been _thrown through her window_, shattering the glass quite spectacularly to deliver an elegantly written message tied to the damn thing with the help of a pretty little bow.

Fact four: Amy had long warned her that ever since she had broken that latest scandal about the mismanagement of the building of the insane asylum, the mob would come after her. Never mind that no arrests had ever been made or charges even brought up against anyone for doing so-- Amy quite sensibly pointed out that the mere fact that Jo had learned of such a business made her a very attractive target. And, though Jo hated to admit it, her sister might even have a point there.

(Frankly, there were times when Jo had to wonder if it wouldn't have been a better idea to have decided to go on writing fanciful little stories for a living, even given all the outrage she had garnered after she had made her most famous heroine turn down the proposal of the handsome swain she had grown up with. Jo's current profession clearly hadn't endeared her to many people over the last few years, and though being an author who had thwarted the course of true love in her books had garnered her disapproving mail as well, none of them had been accompanied by attempts to actually smash her _brains_ in and rearrange the thoughts within it after.)

Fact five: After she had finally recovered from her eyes rolling over to the back of her head in a way they hadn't done since the last time that she had fended off an unwanted proposal, her eyebrows went hiking up on her forehead like a whore's skirt at a cheap tavern when she read the message that had been incongruously attached to the rock with a sketch of a... a rodent of some sort? with wings? a _bat_?!... attached at the end.

Fact Six: The message was as followed:

_Dear Miss Josephine March:_

_Forgive me for handing-- or possibly throwing, mailing, hustling, or dive-bombing-- this message to you on such a short basis. I hate to be so terribly rude on first acquaintance but I'm afraid the time for subtlety has long come and gone, on the back of crime and the tolerance of what ought to be intolerable in the city you've long since made your lair. Though I know your schedule to be stuffed to the brim in your efforts to combat the forces of injustice, I was wondering if you could spare a few weeks of your new life at my disposal? It might just change the course of destiny-- both mine and yours, as well as that of a few hundred thousand others. If this intrigues you in the least, I would be much obliged if you could meet me in midnight three days from now at the old Bowery Theater-- I trust you know where that will be-- whilst you disguise yourself as a man. I recognize this may be an abrupt way of contacting you but I hope you will have the courage to meet me half-way. And I __do_ trust that any fear you may experience will be squashed quite quickly by your curiosity. After all, Miss March, I am not quite the stranger you believe me to be. I've watched you for a long time and I believe you may very well be one of only two people I can count on implicitly in this city.

_Yours For As Long As You Can Spare It,  
A Certain Winged Admirer of An Unusual Persuasion_

Even by Jo's standards of an unhinged fan, it was an unusual... message to have received, even without factoring in the unorthodox manner of delivery. But her eyebrows only hiked up higher, glancing on the stratosphere of her hair-line, when she saw the little addendum added to the note.

_P. S._, it added rather cheekily, _ Do remember to give my regards to your sister and her very special lady friend. If you were wondering, you will in fact find that they took your beloved teapot to a picnic with them recently and forgot it therein, much as they forgot to inform you of such an event. If you were to come to the theater, I swear upon my honor to give you a replacement. You do like the color scarlet best, yes?_

And with that, Miss Josephine March, after wishing for all the strength and courage she could garner from the God she very much hoped was now looking out for her, gingerly poked her head out of the gaping hole in her window and scanned the street to see who on earth was either trying to kill her or woo her at present-- if not combine the two activities together in some peripheral form of madness.

Rather predictably, she saw nothing that could incriminate anyone in particular in this most peculiar of crimes. Even worse than that, she had a reporter's hunch that if she tried to canvas the neighborhood for clues, everyone would conveniently forget to mention anything that could help. She hadn't made herself very popular after reporting on the fact that a good third of the people around her were only a few months away from losing their homes to sharks on the streets. And it really didn't help that even the morally upstanding in her neighborhood all thought of her as some strange, mannish creature that should have been married off and had her mouth stitched shut far before she had gotten to work on trying to reform this infernal city.

Not that it mattered. After all, she thought she had a rather strong hunch-- call it woman's intuition-- about what would be fact number seven.

After all, Miss Josephine March (ace reporter for the only half-way major newspaper in New York that had not bent yet to the organized interests of unions, mobs and crime-bosses) knew what it was like to have unwanted men watching her every move and showering her with gifts that did not come from the department store catalog. Honestly, when an otherwise prim-and-proper unmarried young woman in the city spent her time ferreting out whatever corruption she could possibly find, her social life tended to be the opposite of sedate-- though even she had to concede that she'd never had something so enormous thrown at her skull until today, a fact she did not wish to celebrate.

So even as Jo withdrew her head from her poor, mutilated window, one coherent thought dominated over all others in her head, which was as followed.

_God help me, this had better be a one-time occurrence for both me and this... Mister... Crazy... Rodent... Bat... Person... Thingy. Because if I ever get desperate enough to run into this idiot just to keep him from following me around and interfering with my work, I'm going to show him how to angle his throws better by throwing the largest rock I can find at_ his _bloody and completely unbalanced brain!_

* * *

"I swear," Jo began after marching into her employer's office in a great big huff over the morning's lack of chivalry, "is it just me or do the morals in this grand old American city degrade consistently by the day?"

In response, Mr. Fredrick Vincent Vaughn, a good man, a generous philanthropist, and the owner of the only half-way major newspaper in New York that had not bent yet to the organized interests of unions, mobs and crime-bosses, looked up fearfully from his desk splattered with copy. "My god," he said, letting the article about corruption in lower Manhattan districts slide past his fingers as Jo continued to furiously glare at nothing in particular. "What is it now? Are you all right? Did someone come after you? Is it the mob? The union? The crooked police? Or did someone manage to mail you yet another horse's head?"

"It wasn't a horse's head that one time," Jo reminded him, irritable that her point was being displaced in the conversation by something far less important, such as her health. "That was really sort of more a-- well, a _picture_ of the horse's head. With a bit of blood and brain and skull bits to illustrate what could happen. I suppose they couldn't be bothered to get the money to mail the whole bloody thing."

Eyes a bit wide at her unexpectedly salty language, Fred cleared the seat next to him so that it would be ready for Jo to angrily flounce upon, her entire body seemingly thrumming with enough frustration to permanent rattle her skeleton. "But they mailed you a horse's hoof right after, didn't they?"

"Oh yes," Jo agreed, her mouth twisting into a wry smile as she recalled it. "That _was_ a little more threatening, I imagine, and actually compact as well. Although it was hard to fear for my life after Amy managed the take the poor thing and make a still life out of it. _Threatening Horse's Hoof With Bloodstained Copy of a Newspaper--_ I swear, if I was writing another autobiography, that'd be the title exactly."

As was Fred's wont, his eyes got a little bit sadder at any mention of Jo's artistic sister, though he kept his piercing green gaze still trained on his employee. "And you managed to survive that rather well. So what exactly is it that has you up in so fine a lather this morning?"

She gave him a speaking look; indeed, it was a look that not only spoke, it practically orated its disapproval at operatic levels that could put most of the demagogues in New York to shame. "Do I really need one particular thing to signal discontent, Fred, dear? If you asked me to, I could probably sing and dance a whole litany of what it is that annoys me about New York at the present moment, starting with Mayor Wobbly Bottom and working my way down to the streets."

At that, Fred's face broke out into what as, for him, an almost demonstrative smile-- one that actually tilted the corners of his usually mild mouth. "I've no doubt that that fine mind of yours probably composed an entire opera as you made your way into the office today. Your creativity, dear Jo, is completely wasted on my poor little bit of printing."

She waved the compliment away with an assured air, although a few years back, she would have blushed from forehead to feet. As it was, her ears merely turned a bit red. "It was either spend it here or waste it endlessly revising my life story so I ended up something more than the literary spinster I am today. In any case, even more than mere generalities, I was stirred to action by some most outrageous calumny I have ever inspired whistle past my head presently. It was outrageous, good sir, and it was nothing less than _calumny_!"

Fred's kind, handsome face looked more than a little pained. "Please tell you didn't have another encounter with a police officer, Jo, I beg of you. Especially not near one of those... erm. Houses of... ah... Well. You know. Please make my life a little bit more bearable. Please, old friend."

Jo lifted her formidably molded nose to the air and sniffed. "No, although I wouldn't have hesitated to if I had! It's something even stranger, if you can imagine, and I must protest it hence. Did you know that apparently, some new lunatic in the city have taken to stalking reporters while they sit astride their kitchen table, attempting to peaceably eat?"

Fred blinked at said reporter as she sat before him, fuming and prim-lipped, about as spinsterish as she had ever been. "That is indeed news to me, Miss March. While you were sitting at your kitchen table? I assume it meant he interrupted breakfast completely? I know how peckish you get when you hadn't a decent bit to eat."

She didn't particularly feel as though that last detail needed to be added and so, ignored it in her answer. "Yes, it was news to me as well, even though I just experienced it! And indeed it did, although I couldn't imagine how it wouldn't. It's a bit hard to enjoy a nice spread of marmalade on toast when you have to check it for skull fragments!"

Her employer made a noise of acute distress and Jo, rather approving of his disapproval, leaned back in her chair and went on loftily. "Not that I let that ruin my morning of course. In fact, after a large bit of rock with a pretty little message sailed past my kitchen window, I had to spend the entire morning cleaning up. So if you would like to give me enough of a bonus to pay for repairs after nearly being killed in the line of duty..."

Her friend gave her another small smile, this one even more genuine than before; the little lines at the corner of his striking eyes actually even crinkled a bit. "I would be glad to, Jo, and there's no question you deserve it. That asylum story of your was one of our biggest scoops of the year... although it would have been nice to have perhaps a bit more corroborating evidence."

Jo bristled a bit, although she knew that he hadn't meant it as a rebuke. "It's difficult to gain as much when you actually have to sneak out of what's more-or-less an armored fortress with only the clothes on your back, Fred. And I found more than enough to show that the mob had a healthy stake in helping to build the place, didn't I?"

News-printing guardian angel that he was, Fred merely lifted his hands and shrugged at her, smile tugging at the corners of his mouth again. "You did indeed, Madam, and no one could dare doubt your bravery unless he did thrive on being very foolhardy. Still, going back to this stalker of yours... he threw a _rock_ at you? While you were at your kitchen _table_?"

Cooling down a bit more from the outrage she had been nursing before-- Fred always had this effect on her-- Jo nodded. "Oh yes, completely ruining my entire breakfast spread. Have you ever tried to chew down toast liberally sprinkled with glass fragments? Even the worst quacks of the city wouldn't recommend that method as an aid to indigestion!"

Fred blinked and Jo took it as a signal to dive into her bag, extract the note that came with said sprinkled glass, and slap in down on the desk before him. "And not only that, whoever did this apparently thought it would be a sweet way of getting my attention, before he tried to woo me into helping him save the city or-- or whatever it was that he was looking for. I've received plenty of attention from people who've read my work before but usually, they don't try to send me fan-mail while simultaneously caving my skull in."

Another blink from her employer. "So I'm assuming that the two of you already have a... complicated relationship?"

Her eyebrows went soaring majestically off the rampart of her head once more. "I've met some strange men in my time but this was even more bizarre than the responses I usually get. So yes, I suppose you _could_ put it like that. Not that there's anything complicated about what I would do to this man if I ever got my hands on him..."

Still scanning the note, Fred subtly blanched. "I know you're brave and all, Jo, but please tell me you aren't about to actually walk into the meeting-- or rather, ambush-- that he's proposing for you in three days."

She waved her hands once more, dismissing the very idea. "Oh, don't worry. I know there are far better ways to exit this human coil of misery if I wanted to. Such as trying Amy's cooking after she's spent hours a few hours huffing paint."

Another small, swift smile came from Fred's end; he really was a bit more mobile around her than among even his usual set of stuffy, upper-crust men. "Sometimes, you almost make me glad to be a confirmed bachelor, Jo."

"I do my best," Jo said, smiling a bit at the funny notion of two of the most different people she knew actually being wed. "And trust me, I wouldn't be stupid enough to actually do what he wants. Not when I've got far better ways to deal with men who would happily tan my hide to use as a reporter-skin throw rug to decorate their mansions. So, moving away from my stalker, we may as well get on to business. Any news or new assignments you want me to tackle today?"

Though Fred didn't quite look reassured at her promise to never intentionally share breathing space with Monsieur Flying Rodent Man, he did get a bit of a twinkle in his eyes at her inquiry. Given how that would translate into a roar of approval from most other, less emotionally constipated men, Jo knew whatever he had ferreted out for her would probably be nothing less than absolutely splendid. "If you're sure there's nothing else I could do to help you with your situation, Jo, my friend..."

"Besides possibly putting a spell on me that would make me far less enchanting to mad, bad and dangerous to know men?" Jo asked dryly. "I sure can pick them. Well, you could arrange for a private hired escort or two to maybe stand watch outside a window for a while-- I don't want lunch and dinner to be interrupted by any more archeology lessons. And of course, the very best thing would be to take my poor, fretting mind away from my worries..."

So with a raised blond brow and a slight answering grin of his own, Fred did just that. "Then how would you feel about being my guest of honor at the ball that Mayor--"

"Wiggly Bottom," Jo interrupted, with a perfectly straight face. "Or was it Wobbly? I never could pronounce that name very well."

On another man, that horrified little gasp of his would have translated into a laugh. "You probably shouldn't tell him that to his face, Miss March. And as I was saying, I would be happy to have you be my guest of honor at the ball that Mayor _Willoby_ Bottom is throwing tomorrow at seven. I have no idea whether we would find anything interesting or worthwhile but if you've got a ready mind..."

"...Then there's always something to salvaged from the scions of high society," Jo concluded, her own gray eyes sparkling as she thought of the possibility of cornering one of the high and mighty to extract the truth from them once they felt safe within one of their countless havens. But then her face fell as she remembered what else she would have to do to be admitted into said haven in the first place. "Though I'm assuming I'll actually have to dress like someone a little higher up on the social ladder than your average rag picker to arrive on your arm without comment."

Being the kind man he was, Fred carefully directed his clear gaze away from her unkempt hair, her plain, honest face, and the festively ink-stained dress she was wearing, the one that made her look rather like a gigantic, mobile Rorsarch test. "You could have all your expenses compensated, Jo. It's the least I could do after all the trouble I and the paper have put you through."

Damn straight, though Jo was careful only to direct a melting look of sweet thankfulness and humility to her boss as he made the kind offer. "Oh, would you, dear Fred? I couldn't thank you enough for your kindness! You are just about the most considerate employer in all the world."

He didn't look very convinced at that, though his eyes softened a little as he took her somewhat-less-sour-than-usual visage in. "You're kind to say so, Jo, but I think you exaggerate. I'm sure I've made your life much harder. Haven't you ever thought of how peaceful and serene your life could be if you weren't attempting to overthrow Nellie Bly as the most courageous woman journalist in the country?"

"All the time," Jo said, grinning despite herself. "But then, I always imagine myself chained to a stove somewhere, trying fruitlessly to write while juggling a husband on the one hand and half-a-dozen children in the other. I think I have rather the better deal here. _Especially_ if you keep your end of the deal on the pretty new dress you'll let me buy... and the escort that'll keep me safe from all further attempts at rough, rodent-based wooing."

"Fair enough," Fred said, the left side of his face twitching again, either amused or having an allergic reaction to something. "I shall be by to pick you up tomorrow night at seven in the evening. Be sure to run down to the usual dressmaker's and arrange to have something suitable fit for you on my credit. And remember to try and enjoy yourself a bit while working. After all it wouldn't do to lose my lead reporter to fatigue!"

Jo snorted, even as she stood up, stretching a bit and not in the least caring that Fred's eyes were still on her. He was probably just checking to see if she had sustained any damage earlier, knowing that she had a tendency to downplay such things. "Believe me, Mr. Vaughn, if you lose your star employee, it shall be due to other reasons entirely. Let me just finish the last few details on the story about the woman who claims she was saved from a grisly death by some dark phantom of the night and I'll be off to equip myself for the evening."

"Fair enough," Fred said, his eyes temporarily falling away from her, so that his pale lashes ended up falling against his cheeks in what would have been, in another man, hand-wringing. If Jo hadn't had her mind occupied with happy thoughts of free dresses and new chances to wring information out of the unwilling, she would have actually been concerned. As it was, the concern in his voice as he spoke again actually came as a surprise.

"Although, I suppose, before you decide to attend, you ought to know..."

It wasn't like Fred to speak so hesitantly. Even in her had stupor, as she was almost through the door and out to her own cluttered work, Jo swung her head back to see what could possibly make Fred suddenly sound so hesitant and even... sad? "Sorry, Fred? What was that? Don't tell me that we've got something else to worry about at the party?"

Not that she minded a challenge, of course. Jo often did her best work when there was little to no chance of victory on the horizon. Where lesser men and women trembled to tread, she had, more often than not, galloped in with her dirty boots and her complete lack of tact and her ink-blotted dress with her notes stuffed down the front, and somehow managed to return from enemy territory with her skin intact and more than enough notes for a thrilling morning story.

She was, as Amy had delicately put it more than few times before, one of the oddest and bravest people most would ever meet. And she was all the better a reporter for it, even if it did make her dear Marmee fret about both her spinsterhood and her life almost equally.

But even she wouldn't have been able to guess at the scope of the challenge that was about to hit her across the face, or the way that Fred would try to break it to her: gently, evenly, almost carefully, as though afraid the Unsinkable Josephine March might finally meet her match yet.

"Yes," he said, and his low, careful voice actually made her stop cuing up a victory theme in her mind, still glorying in the advantages of working with such generous employee benefits. "Well. I may indeed, although it all depends on how comfortable you feel with your assignment. After all, it isn't every day that someone from our past-- someone we all thought was _dead_-- ends up resurfacing again."

For a minute, Jo couldn't quite understand his words; after the span of a several heart-beats, she knew she wouldn't be able to forget them. "I... Fred? Do you mean--"

"It's Dora," her employer blurted out, his eyes glancing everywhere but at her frozen figure, her hand still arrested on the door's knob, her stomach sudden spasming. "I mean, it's your Laurie. Theodore Laurence. I know it's been almost eight years but somehow... well. He somehow made his way back from New York from God knows what forsaken land he's been in and he's already been tearing up high society for the last three days. Not many people even know about his arrival yet but I have my sources and I can verify them. And I'm told he will be at Mayor Bottom's ball as well, as the guest of honor even. So I thought that perhaps, since you have a history together, you could maybe get him to open up a bit about... but I mean, only if you wish to of course, Jo. I wouldn't press you to actually do anything you didn't want to, obviously. I wouldn't, Jo-- you know I care-- I wouldn't ask you to do it if. If you didn't want to, just then."

And just then, her figure frozen, her hand arrested on the door knob half twisted, her stomach in a spasm and her breath trapped in her gullet, her entire body so tense that she could have been shattered by a breath--

Just then. She was barely woman enough to admit she didn't want to just then. Come to think of it, she didn't want to at _all_, 'just then' or a week from 'just then' or ages and ages from 'just then', whatever 'just then' might be.

If she could get away with it, Jo would be happy never to run into Mr. Theodore Laurence ever again. Especially considering the role she had played in keeping him away from what seemed to be the entire civilized world for almost all the past eight years.

However, she had a job to do and by God, Fred in all his generosity and kindness was expecting her to do it. And what could she possibly tell him if she turned this opportunity down? _Sorry, Mr. Vaughn, but though you've given me all the support I could have possibly asked for for the past five years we've worked together, I'm too much a moral coward to talk to the man I jilted more than seven years back, sending him out into the world to do God knows what with his rage?_

No, it was even worse than that. She could add to the condemnation.

_Even after I saw how he had reacted to what had happened to his grandfather in this very city? Even after I spent years knowing him and realizing just what was underneath that perfect surface of his when it came to the murder of his family?_

Oh yes, very fine excuse. She was sure it would play very well with Fred, especially after all that he'd done for her and her miserable hide over the last few, extremely dangerous years.

And so, being much too much a moral coward to tell Fred she was a moral coward, Jo forced one last dazzling, if utterly counterfeit, smile on her face before she left her employer's office.

"Don't be ridiculous," she cheerfully blustered, hoping Fred wouldn't pick up on the panic lurking just below her bright words. "This would be a _splendid_ opportunity to catch up with an old friend _and_ perhaps get a scoop for our readers! Laurie always was a tricky one, after all, and it would nice for us both to spar with him again, wouldn't it? Maybe we could arrange a nice little exclusive introducing a new scion to New York. The ladies alone would love it. He always was so very charming when he was young and I'm sure that hasn't worn off any."

The thought of meeting Laurie again primarily to package him into fodder for the masses almost made Jo's stomach empty from the burning hypocrisy. But when Fred nodded appreciably at her and Jo nodded back, as chipper as could be, she knew there could be nothing else done for it. She had agreed and she was now condemned and she was most definitely going to see the man she had almost loved and most definitely lost nearly eight years ago at a high society ball tomorrow night...

All while pretending it meant nothing, could not mean anything, and that little business of driving him away because she was an insensitive twit who couldn't understand the very severity of his feelings?

_Ahahaha, Teddy, so sorry to have rejected you so harshly after the murder of your entire family! So sorry I was such a little bint earlier but you seem perfectly hale and hearty now and... look, you're even back into the loving bosom of the corrupt society that helped kill your parents! No hard feelings, right?_

She was doomed. Utterly, completely and probably very justifiably doomed.

It was enough to make a girl wish that the rock that had sailed through her window earlier this morning really had connected in the first place.

* * *

**Author's Note**: So. Loved it? Hated it? Want to read more chapters? Want to never read anything like this again? Please do let me know what you think of this story, since this is by far an unstable experiment and I would love to know whether it's working or not working. I want the writing to be fun and pulpy, Jo to be bad-ass and yet still recognizably herself, and Fred to be an endearing soul who will most definitely play an important role in future chapters. Have I succeeded in your eyes, dear readers? I write primarily for your pleasure, after all. ;)


	2. Chapter 2

Though this chapter is a little slower than the first one, I had a great deal of fun laying out more of the hopeless backdrop of gritty New York City... as well as getting to write a kick-ass Amy that won't be a submissive little pod-person wife to _nobody_, ya hear? Because really, who _didn't_ like Amy more when she actually had a personality as a young kid, before having all her roughest and most _interesting_ edges shorn off so she could enter a bland marriage with Laurie? ;)

In any case, I hope you continue to enjoy the Strangest Crossover of All Time. And please review if you read this part! Reviews really motivate me to keep working on this series, which can sometimes get _very_ annoying to plot indeed.

Also, much love to Ed and Elisabeth for helping me with this part. You two are my twin angels of plotting.

**Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Chapter 2  
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight  
Series: Dark Scribe Begins  
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast  
Rating: R  
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...  
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.**

* * *

Three days went by far, far faster than Jo was comfortable admitting. Looking back, Jo had to admit that she had spent much of the time between the moment she had foolishly accepted the assignment to interview Laurie and the moment she was ready to be taken to a venue to see him again by shirking from her duties as much as she possibly could. She had sent the past few days in a haze, annoying the printers by misspelling her posts, puzzling her fellow reporters with her unprecedented eagerness to hand over her assignments, and even confusing the gangsters she'd ran into the other night by barely seeming to care about the fluids they'd splashed around them so earnestly. In the end, Jo hadn't even managed to gin up the courage to take herself to the dress-makers and make herself presentable for such a high society function, forcing her long-suffering sister to once again take the reigns and smooth over the situation.

"Honestly, Jo," Amy was now grumbling, pulling on a few stray coils of dark hair that was refused to be tamed. "What on earth do you _put_ in these fine locks to make them as stubborn as the rest of you? Actual ink? Elbow grease?"

"Oh don't be ridiculous," Jo muttered from the seat she was wilting in, silently counting down the hours-- only one left to go!-- until Fred would show up at her door, make sad eyes at her sister, and then escort her to a party, only to watch with alarm as his lead reporter deflated quickly. "I only got a little bit of blood in it from last night. It isn't my fault those gang-fights are getting more vicious all time, and the fluid went all flying. Anyway, I washed it all out just this morning so I'm not sure why _you're_ complaining. More than anything, in this case, I think I'm the injured party."

Amy's adorable and only slightly flattened nose wrinkled as she thought of it, her hands flying from Jo's head as though she were a vampire and her sister had morphed into the true cross suddenly. "Believe me, I need no further details. Though I still can't understand why you wouldn't even let me at it until I begged you to-- I can't have any sister of mine going to a place like that with her hair all untidy! In fact, I can't believe you didn't even pick up that new dress of yours. Fred was going to have the paper pay and everything. Even if you didn't want it, Laura and I could have used it. It would have fit her nicely."

That was true enough. Amy's closest friend, and their current room-mate, probably would have appreciated the gift of a brand new dress very sincerely. Laura-- who also, disconcertingly enough, answered to Laurie-- wasn't quite as attuned to style and fashion as the woman she occasionally called her better half in some inside joke Jo couldn't quite discern. Regardless, Laura did seem enjoy the occasional pretty treat and with her statuesque figure, dazzling auburn hair and limpid green eyes, she would have set whatever dress Jo could have gotten to far greater effect than Jo herself could possibly see.

To be honest, Jo sometimes had to wonder how not one but _two_ such entrancingly pretty and charming women could remain single in a city crawling with so many eligible bachelors. But that was only sometimes and right now, with Amy's brilliant cerulean eyes gazing sardonically at her through the medium of their vanity mirror, Jo's thoughts were consumed by another topic entirely.

Which was why Jo now found herself smiling sheepishly and trying to send the proverbial gossip hound off a very juicy scent. "Would you believe it plum slipped my helpless little mind completely?"

"About as much as I believe that sooner or later you'll give up being Nelly Bly's understudy to be a happy little house-wife," Amy returned sternly. "You've got a mind like a steel-trap, Jo. Things don't simply _slip_ by it quite so easily."

Sometimes, Jo honestly did regret her decision to live with someone who knew her so well. Not that she didn't enjoy Amy's company-- after all, ever since Amy had come back from Europe and decided to live the bohemian life with her disgrace of an older sister, they'd got along smashingly. But sometimes her sister's watchful eyes could be keener than Jo wanted to admit, hypocritical though the sentiment was...

Instead of admitting to that, however, Jo tried a winsome smile and attempted to deflect by playing on her sister's well-known vanity. "Oh, don't be silly, Amy dear! Are you describing my mind or your own?"

"Both," Amy answered serenely, and then compounded her word by twisting one of Jo's curls 'round her finger and tugging until Jo yelped in defeat. "I assume it comes from being family. And you're not going to slither out of this trap so easily, Jo. Something _is_ bothering you, isn't it? You know you're going to have to confess eventually."

That was true enough, especially if Amy retained her iron grip on her hair. But stubborn to the last, Jo contented herself with simply hunching down in her chair and muttering something about dropping Amy far too often on her head as a child-- which might have been the only thing that could explain how she'd gotten so _infuriating_ as an adult at sensing emotional train-wrecks in the making.

Unfortunately for Jo, Amy's hearing was at least as keen as her eye-sight-- and at least as sharp as the fingers that dug into Jo's curls once more until Jo yelped once more before quieting down in defeat. "I'm sure," Amy said, eyes gleaming with an unholy light, "that _dear_ Mr. Vaughn would wait for you if I told him that we needed some more time to set those oh-so-stubborn hairs of yours to right. _Hours_, if we needed to. Hours to bond together as sisters. Only you, my Jo. Only you and _me._"

Jo had to subside at the warning embedded there, if only to keep her scalp from committing hari-kiri. Still, the look she shot back at Amy was half-admiring and half-alarmed. "I swear, Amy, you must have been part of the Spanish Inquisition in another life. All right, all right, if you promise not to leave me bald, I swear I'll tell you everything!"

Amy simply smiled primly at that, as though she had been doing something more along the lines of showing a prospective buyer her art than torturing her sister into compliance through the most devious, if gentle-womanly, of means. "Really? Why Jo, how kind of you to say so. I knew you'd speak sense eventually."

Her victim, sister, and earnest supporter had to smile up at her, if only wryly. "Amy, are you quite sure you'll _never_ tire of your art and become a reporter in my field? I bet you could have half the mob-bosses of the city wrapped around your finger and teach the other half to be good through the application of a few interrogation techniques."

"No thank you," Amy returned briskly. "I've seen what it does to the coiffure and I want no part of such misdeeds. And don't think mere flattery will stop me from getting the answers I desire. After all..."

And oh, never had the mere act of someone toying with Jo's curls proved so threatening!

"Your hair looks so lovely tonight," Amy murmured, eyes sharp on her sister's. "It'd be such a shame were I to accidentally unpin a few curls and have to start all over. Such a long, painful shame indeed."

Jo had to smile, even through her impending wince. When Amy wanted to be, she could be damn near _frightening._ She personally knew of at least one mad doctor in Arkham who probably would have sold his left leg to do to his criminal patients what Amy did to her so easily.

"I'll sing like a canary," Jo promised at last, and tilted back her head to look her sister directly in the face. "Only be good! And let me have a minute to collect my thoughts presently."

Which was Amy's cue, apparently, to give her a nudge and let Jo muddle into the mess of her own mind for a minute, a perilous task even in the best of days and one not rendered any easier by what a mess she had made of past and future presently. Looking at Amy herself helped a little-- especially since the lovely flower-maiden in the mirror before her served as such a good grounding to the present Jo was in now... as well as such a good warning against the past that Jo was tempted to revisit all too easily. After all, when Jo gazed at the calm and cunning maiden beside her now, it was hard to believe that only a few years ago-- eight to be exact-- when all this this trouble had began, Amy herself had only been a gawky adolescent on the verge of becoming a woman, a girl who was still unsure of her true calling in life, of the path toward stubborn immortality through the medium of art that she now devoted herself to so fully.

But then... had Jo really been any more formed at that point, eight years ago? She'd been a little older than Amy, of course, but just as tentative about what she wanted in her own future, although she had hid it with her bluster about moving to New York and being a literary spinster that would be happy living on ink-blot clouds and delicate artistic fancies. She'd been frightened but brash, unsure but unwilling to admit it, only knowing that the world _must_ go her way or she herself must go far away, so blind to what went on around her that she had assumed that she always knew what was best,

_(a hand flattening against her uncertain skin)_

that she could make decisions not merely for herself but for all the others around her, sure she knew what to do not merely with her own life but with those of others, afraid but unwilling to accept and thus master her fear, playing with fire like an idiot child convinced she would not and could not burn--

_(promise you'll stay with me)_

How many reparations did she still have to make for those long lost days?

_(if you leave me, then i don't know what i'll do)_

How many promises had she since failed to keep?

"Jo?" someone softly said beside her ear, laying a gentle hand on her brow. "Jo, dear, what's bothering you so here?"

Not knowing quite where to begin, she decided finally on the truth, although even for her it illuminated nothing.

"It's Laurie," Jo said at last, the words spilling almost carelessly from her mouth, as though words alone could stem the memories now seeming to filter out of her skin, as though enough to bleed her dry quickly. "I was told that-- I mean, it hasn't even been a week but-- Fred just came out and said--"

For a second, Jo was sure she had hallucinated a blush on Amy's face, before her sister's usual maidenly reserve asserted itself, along with her usual tart sweetness. "And _my_ Laurie would be a concern of yours and Fred's _why_, precisely?"

If Jo hadn't known Amy better, she would have sworn a flicker of fear animated her brilliant sky-blue eyes currently.

Badly startled, Jo had a to pause. "You've-- you've already met with Laurie already? When? _Where?_ Was--" And oh God, she felt like such an arrogant fool for asking but--

"Was," Jo finally managed, her heart in her throat, "anything said about me?"

Amy continued to look worried for a second, even through the calm coming down upon her lovely face like snow-fall during early spring. "I can hardly avoid meeting Laurie, Jo. We _do_ live with her, after all. And if Fred happened to mention seeing us on Millbourn street with her holding my hand for a moment, I can quite assure you--"

Jo stared herself for a moment, taking in Amy's cool explanation with wide eyes before she abruptly cut her sister of with a sharp, oddly relieved laugh. "Amy, I'm not talking about _your_ best friend Laurie! I'm taking about _my_ best friend Laurie! Or... well, the best friend named Laurie that I used to have anyway."

The reminder of that was enough to make Jo shade into melancholy and cause her sister to look down at her with a frown, as though deeply worried.

"After all, I'm not sure how good a friend I was considering what I-- I both did to him and let him do after the last time we saw each other. As he'll probably remind me once he sees me at the party Fred's dragging me to this evening. Lord knows I probably wouldn't be all lovely and forgiving if I resurfaced back in society after God only knows how many years away doing God only knows what abroad--"

Quick-thinking as ever, Amy pulled another curl loose and tugged sharply, making Jo yelp and then shake her fist at her sister once more-- though even Jo had to admit that Amy probably did what she did now out of love.

It was an impression confirmed by Amy's prim face in response to her sister's ramblings, with the youngest March looking just as stern as Marmee March had been in her finest hours. "Jo, you're falling to pieces once again and you know how much I despise that. It always makes an untidy mess when you run wild and let's not get into _that_. Take a deep breath and explain it all logically. I know you're capable of that. You're Josephine March, after all. You don't _do_ hysterics at the drop of a hat."

For a minute, Jo's mouth wobbled a bit, in a way she never would have allowed it if she wasn't with family and with someone who loved her, with someone who wouldn't bat at an eyelash while seeing weakness from her, with someone who could watch her break for no reason they could fully fathom while still placing their warm hands on her shoulders. In the cold cityscape that lay outside them, Josephine March, reporter at large, might well be everything and more that her youngest sister had describe. But for now, she was merely Jo and if her heart was breaking a little as it beat beneath her breast, she was with someone who would not take advantage of the fact in any way possible.

She felt so grateful she could tear up, and it was only the certain knowledge that Amy was absolutely right that kept Jo from being an absolute fool.

"Sorry, dear," she said instead, and did not add on the silent _thank you_, though from the way Amy smiled, Jo thought she already knew. "I'm being quite a mess now for the silliest reason possible, aren't I? I promise, I'll do better now."

"I hope so," Amy said, and though her tone was stern, the hands she wound around her sister's shoulders were very gentle. "I never like it when you cry; you look like a fire hydrant going off. It's so absurdly messy." And then, with a delicacy that seemed strange for stern, firm, morally upright Amy, she paused for a moment before continuing. "Does the thought of seeing Laurie-- _your_ Laurie, I mean-- really and truly bother you?"

Placing her hands on her sister's to steady herself, Jo managed a small and not-entirely-false smile. "He's not my Laurie anymore. He probably never was, to tell the truth. And by now, I'm sure he never will be again. I mean-- not that I was expecting him to be or-- thinking that he'd come back all this way just to pursue--"

"No," Amy interrupted calmly, squeezing her sister's shoulders, "I'm sure you're not. So what are you afraid of, if not the idea of him coming back to chase you? You can't honestly think that after all this time, he came back to New York just to-- God only knows-- take some mad revenge on you if he truly did feel ill-used."

Jo had to genuinely smile at the thought. "I can honestly tell you that whatever I feared, it wasn't that. Although who knows? Maybe I should."

Amy sighed, clearly thinking her sister was once again evading the question. "Oh Jo..."

"I really don't," Jo replied earnestly. "Even if he now hated me--" (a very grim but real possibility) "--he wouldn't need to do anything, given the entourage of idiots and lunatics that are after me everyday anyhow. To be honest, Amy... I really don't know what I'm afraid of. And that's what's always scared me the most. I've always hated not knowing what's going on and with him, here for no reason I can understand... well, I feel it more and more and it scares me all the deeper. I don't know exactly why Laurie even left us in the first place, after all. I mean, I have my theories and my ideas but I don't know why for sure. And if I don't know why he left or why he came back to America-- and even more, to _New York_-- I can't even tell you what I'm afraid will happen when we finally meet each other once more. I was--"

It shamed Jo to admit it more than a little but she forced herself onwards, Amy's worried eyes gazing on her.

"I was looking for him for a very long time. Longer even then you knew before. I was looking for him in both the States and in Europe and Fred... well, you know how he is, you practically married him, and you know he's got a lot of reach there and he was happy to help me look. But for eight years, we saw neither hide nor hair or heard much more than the vaguest rumors about Laurie turning up in the strangest places possible. And after seven years of searching and seeing nothing of him in any continent we could find..."

Another thing that made her lungs burn at the thought of seeing him again. Another small, petty slight to the friendship that they had once shared. Another reason for him to reject her when they met again, to denounce her as a false friend, to let her know that she was nothing but a mocking witch who had allowed him to descend to God only knew what foul depths.

Only Amy was now stroking her hair so gently, so slowly, heedless of the dark curls tumbling and coming loose with the tender motions, as though she had suddenly become the older sister and Jo was the younger one she needed to soothe back into gentleness.

For a minute, Jo thought of her Beth and knew that family was family, no matter what guise it held her in.

"Jo," her sister was now saying softly, "you mustn't blame yourself for conclusion we all thought was likely. We all thought Laurie was lost and gone, years before you did. How can you blame yourself for believing so, especially when you tried far harder than any of the rest of us in trying to track him down after he fled?"

She had to laugh at that, even if came out queer and hollow and all too well. "Well," she replied, "I can and apparently I am. It turns out that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated. Fred told me he's apparently been here for a bit already, 'tearing up high society.' And it's been nearly a decade and now he's back in the very city, living it up where his grandfather was--"

Amy's fingers tightened like tiny knives on her shoulders and Jo immediately felt sorry for bringing up the topic once more, dredging up all the memories of the horror had once been. Of course her sister wouldn't want to hear. And it wasn't even that Amy wasn't brave or kind or empathetic or unable to face the ugliness of the world. She'd come so far from the finnicky girl that Jo had once known and fought against so often that she occasionally seemed like a different person altogether.

It was simply that it was... horrible, even for someone as battle-hardened as Jo, to remember how the late Mr. Laurence had met his cruel and undeserved end, that was all. Horrible, even for someone who strode out into the world every night, knowing that she'd see something inevitably ugly in the streets of a city that seemed to descend more into chaos more and more, as thought it were on a collision course to hell.

His poor little hat with its slick black band, Jo remembered, the recollection almost cruel in how perfectly it came to her. The crown of it filled with brains and blood. The brim splattered even further.

Finally, her voice soft and hushed, Amy ventured into words once more. "Are you sure-- are you very, _very_ sure-- he didn't come back to New York for you, dear?"

The question was enough to make Jo start with surprise, although she had asked herself that one-- and only one-- time before she had quite literally slammed herself back to sanity. "Yes, of course! I-- I might not know _him_ perfectly anymore but I know how he left! Why would he even do such a thing?"

Somehow, Amy actually managed to smirk a little, although it was not quite at full strength. "Well, the half-decade or so that he chased you shamelessly around in Connecticut might have given me a bit of a hint."

Despite herself, Jo blushed, even as she fought Amy on the point earnestly. "Well, you're imagining things! He wasn't _chasing_ me about, for God's sake. We were friends and he... occasionally needed female company." When that failed to banish Amy's sly smile-- and in fact, made it widen even more-- Jo just huffed and turned away. "And if he _did_ want to come back for me, he should have come back _before_ I lost whatever I had of looks to old age!"

Affecting surprise, Amy rocked back on her heels. "You had looks enough to _lose_ something in the first place?"

Jo found herself caught up in a surprised laugh at that, even as she leaned back to rap Amy's smartly enough to make the ice-maiden pout, as though they have transformed into children romping around with their beloved next-door neighbor once more. "Wait 'til I tell Marmee what you just said-- or better yet, Meg! She'll set Daisy and Demi on you until you repent of your wicked misdeeds."

Amy emitted something that might have been a snort in a less exquisite woman. "Then they may cling to me as long as the like because I choose to keep all my wickedness and carry on with my present course."

And then, more seriously, pressing her hands to Jo's shoulders once more, Amy said: "So tell me.. what's the use of you going to pieces over our old neighbor, dear? He may well be back after eight long years and Lord only knows why but perhaps he's only here because his family money ran out and there was no other place left to make his fortune. Or maybe he experienced severe head trauma and migrated back to a native city. Who knows? Who even cares? It looks as though you've got enough on your plate with male admirers who like to smash out kitchen windows and Fred working your writing fingers to the bone to worry about old friends making a nuisances of themselves. So why worry about meeting Laurie so? You've got no reason to feel guilty over him, after all. So go on with your life and unless he approaches you himself, simply let him be. Events will eventually follow the least dramatic course."

Wise words, Jo knew very well. Wise words indeed. And if she hadn't expressly been told to keep tabs on Laurie by Fred himself-- or know exactly _how_ she had let the man down before-- she might have had the will to heed them despite the ache she felt at knowing Laurie was alive once more and knowing she would have to hold herself aloft.

Amy meant well, she always did. And her advice was always precisely as good as she could make it. And if Jo hadn't been such a bloody coward, she would have turned to her wisest sister now and told her precisely why she had reason to fear meeting Laurie again. Would have told her at least one of the theories she held for why Laurie had left and it had been so much her fault. Would have told her at least one of the reasons she had been-- been horribly unhappy in a way she shouldn't have to know Laurie was in _her_ city just then.

But in the end, Jo was a coward-- a _moral_ coward. A coward who didn't dare look into the eyes of her well-meaning sister and let her know that her version of brave, warm, wonderful-if-not-quite-womanly Jo needed to have more than a few thorns placed in. A coward-- and even more, just as much an actress as Jo had wanted to be as a young girl befriending and trying to impress a handsome young man she had met one courtly evening, as she had ducked into an alcove to escape a dance. Just enough a coward and just enough an actress to muster up a grateful smile good enough to fool Amy's keen blue eyes and leave her believing she really had soothed her older sister's mind once more.

She almost had, Jo thought, even as Amy gave her a prim little smile that conveyed her belief that all was right in their world again thanks to a good, solid scolding. And for now, it would have to be enough.

Through the haze of her still-jangling nerves, Jo mustered up a sincere smile and leaned against her companion's warm frame. "What would I ever do without you, Amy? Who else has ever had such a fine sister?"

Amy sniffed a bit, wordlessly conveying that flattering meant to her not a whit, even as she flushed at the acknowledgment. "I shan't even reply to the last question. And to be quite honest about the first? You'd probably end up dead in a ditch somewhere. With terrible hair as well, just to compound the tragedy."

Smiling more sincerely, Jo beamed as she looked up. "And I'm safe from such a fate as long as you're about, I imagine?"

"Absolutely," Amy replied, as resolute as ever. "I refuse to let something so untidy occur when _I'm_ here. Now..." And now she leaned over, watching with relish as Jo paled more than she would have had she faced a hundred Lauries all throwing accusations at her-- "Let's see what we can do about the rest of you. After all, if you're about to meet an old friend and would-be-- tup, tup, don't interrupt me, dear-- _suitor_, you may as well make an impression when he finally comes around."

Jo looked up at the controlled calm on her sister's lovely face and swallowed. Suddenly, she had a feeling a night that would have been uncomfortable even at the best of times was about to get even more unseemly...

* * *

Which was how, one hour later, Jo found herself sitting inside Fred's carriage looking-- as Amy had cheerfully chirped whilst ignoring her past suitor's earnest gaze-- like a cross between a missionary and a man-eater.

"Ahm," he said, staring bewildered at her after he'd stopped gazing wistfully after her sister and helped her into the night's ride while trying not to look down into her... business. "Miss March, you rather look... look..."

"Don't start," she muttered, and tried to hunch to hide her harrowingly deep cleavage in the shadows of the carriage interior. "And don't look at me as though I were a scarlet woman either. This is all my sister's fault!" Somewhere along the line, Amy had lost the deep prudishness that had once marked most of her interactions with the world, and it was now clear that her kin was paying for it in spades.

She should have known beyond that visage of golden innocence lurked a great and deadly evil. Should have prepared for it, even. After all, Amy _did_ have a habit of trying to rearrange the lives of others to suit her artistic sensibilities. And for all her talk about Jo needing to be nonchalant and unconcerned about her ex-best-friend springing back to life, she certainly had seemed quite excited about doing her older sister up enough to make a splash in a certain high society gathering...

"Amy's fault?" Fred was saying, sounding a little insultingly dubious. "It's, ah, a little hard to believe that she might, erm..."

"It's a long story," Jo said, stormily enough to make him stop short, though a slight blush was rising on his cheeks. (And Jo very much hoped it was merely out of the mention of Amy!) "And can't we talk about something else _besides_ my appearance? The impending drug war? That god-awful doctor at Arkham? The old woman on 21st and Lex that swore she saw some sort of dark knight come to her rescue, or whatever she was raving?"

"We could," Fred said, and his lips quirked up in what might have been a smile in a less severely British man. "I have to admit, though, that I am a little... interested in learning how that manner of dressed managed to end up wrapped in such a, er, unique way about you presently."

Jo glared at her employer through a haze of feathery ruffles and absurd ringlets, knowing full well that if they hadn't become such good chums over the last few years, one or the both of them would probably end up employed and/or maimed after this carriage ride was over. "Sir, I would have you know that you are currently in the presence of a lady! One that's mostly kept her virtue at that, despite the dangers you've subjected her to constantly!"

"Oh, of course," Fred murmured, although his eyes crinkled suspiciously at the thought. Darkly, Jo wondered once more why on earth Amy had turned down his hand in marriage so many years ago. It was clear that if they had, they could have spent quite a lot of time happily engaged in tormenting her together, rather than separately. "Although from what I recall, the dangers I 'subjected' you to were ones that you seemed rather indignant to be deprived of at the time."

Jo merely hunched back into the shadows and tried to look stern, although she knew full well he was merely speaking the truth. "That was _before_ I realized that high society balls were included in the bargain. You know I'm no good at these things, Fred. I come off looking like a shaved ape in front of grand company."

Fred tried to ward off a smile again, although Jo wasn't fooled in the least. "I'm sure you exaggerate," he said kindly, making Jo wonder what on earth might have been clouding his memory of the _last_ few times he had made an attempt to escort her into high society. "And besides," he added, as though it were in any way a comfort, "Laurie shall be there at this party! Shan't you be pleased to see him after all these years and after so much effort in looking for him? I'm certainly looking forward to clapping his hand once more and telling him he gave us a merry chase and a good scare. And of course you knew him much better than I did, which makes you a natural for garnering an interview." Mistily, Fred looked up at the ceiling of the bouncing carriage that took them closer and closer to what Jo dreaded most. "Oh, think of the sales that might come from that! I tell you, Jo, we'd make bank presently."

Once again, Jo wondered dolefully why the fates seemed to hate her so, to entrust her with companions who seemed intent on thrusting her at a man who probably wouldn't spit on her now were she set on fire. Still, for Fred's sake, she plastered on a smile that she hoped would look natural in the shadows. "Oh-- absolutely! Although," (and here she couldn't keep a note of hope out of her voice) "Who even knows if he'll recognize me in my current disguise? I look like a nun that ran off to be a whore and only changed her clothes half-way."

Somehow, Fred managed to do exactly as Amy did by emitting something that might have been a snort in a lesser man. "I think you underestimate yourself once again, Jo! Colorful though that comparison may be, it underrates you severely. I think you actually look quite..."

Was that a blush on Fred's face? Jo shrank back into the shadows with morbid embarrassment at the compliment he was forcing forward.

"Quite lovely this evening," Fred said gallantly.

"That's an adjective more suited to you and you know," Jo said dryly. And indeed it was. In his slender dark suit and with his tousled blond hair barely brushing his ears, Fred looked as handsome as ever, almost an exact match in fairness of features to the flower-maiden who had been tormenting Jo so well earlier in the evening. Once again, Jo wondered why on earth they hadn't come forward to have a passel of very beautiful, golden-blond, stoic children who likely wouldn't change expression were they set on fire. "And really, don't try and ply me with compliments about my _appearance_, of all things! Not when..." And here Jo allowed herself to lean forward and give Fred a saucy smile, making his own lips turn up in response. "You can ply me with far better things."

"Such as?" Fred asked, leaning forward a little, keen green eyes the equal of Jo's own in the low light.

"Such as information on what the Mayor hopes to get out of this evening," Jo said calmly, and leaned forward to learn something of consequence for what was coming.

The rest of the short carriage ride went on in much the same way, with Jo and Fred discussing who the principal players of the evening were and what their coming together might mean. The Mayor, after all, was a man who sat upon his public seat more because the devil the voters knew seemed slightly preferable to one they hadn't met before, and was known to be helplessly corrupt by even the greenest gumshoe in the city. Jo had long thought that he was probably on the take of the most corrupt mobs out there and hearing Fred list off several probable guest at the part didn't exactly ease her suspicions. Wealthy businessmen, after all, were a fixture in society but having _Salvatore Maroni_, of all people, as a guest of honor was quite the to-do. After all, the man's intermediary organizations had been implicated in some of the worse bursts of violence down in Hell's Kitchen, as well as the burgeoning drug trade...

Not that, Jo knew, there was anything to connect the man himself to any of that sort of business. Which allowed a man whose hands were stained by proxy in the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, to swan about near the Mayor of New York in one of the grandest occasions of the years as though butter would not melt in his mouth.

Jo's bones ached with the very injustice of it all, honestly.

"With Maroni might come who knows who else to this affair," Fred was warning her now, even as they could hear their carriage ride coming to an end, and glimpse the lights of the upcoming party. "And despite your passion for justice, Jo, I'd very much like you not to paint a target on your back for the time being. So please, if you could simply decide to talk to Laurie and very few others tonight..."

"I'll be very, _very_ good," Jo sweetly promised, though Fred only accepted as much dubiously.

"I hope you are," he murmured, "because it seems as though we're finally at the moment of reckoning. Please don't 'famous last words' me!"

"Lead on, good sir," she said and grinned wholly unwholesomely. "I shall be nothing more than your follower for the evening."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Next chapter... both the hero and the (a?) villain of the story step into play, with Jo in the middle between them! But she certainly isn't about to take a _passive_ approach to conflict resolution...

Also, a question for my readers. Do you like this Amy? Do you want to see more of her or would you rather I shunt her out of the main story? I had fun writing her because I always felt as though she would have been an awesome character in canon if only she didn't decide to marry a man who's probably still in love with her sister and give up having a cool, bohemian life to have a rich man's pretty, boring babies and be the perfect Victorian housewife-- a transformation that really took away the most fascinating parts of her personality in favor of bland perfection. So I tried to write her as being just as awesome, petty, shallow, perfectionist, flawed and yet ultimately loyal and loving as I always wanted her to be. Did it work? Would you like to see more of Amy ultimately?

And as always, **please review** if you've enjoyed this story and would like to read more. It always helps my poor, wandering attention span keep on writing. ;)


	3. Chapter 3

I'm trying to work on this series a little more quickly-- thus the reason that chapter 3 is up so soon after chapter 2. It's a little shorter than the previous chapter but by god, we finally introduce more of the starring cast... including not one but _two_ gentlemen who influence the story line for many arcs to come. If you're following this series, you can probably guess who I'm speaking of!

In any case, thanks again for reading and please do leave me a review if you're following the series. Special love goes to Ed and Elizabeth for helping me get over the hump of this chapter. You two are irreplaceable! And extra, extra love goes to Potix, who made me a bloody gorgeous banner for this fic. Thank you so much!

**Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Chapter 3  
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight  
Series: Dark Scribe Begins  
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast  
Rating: R  
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...  
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. Jo March takes the place of Rachel Dawes, with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence standing in for Bruce Wayne. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.**

* * *

**Last Chapter:**

_"With Maroni might come who knows who else to this affair," Fred was warning her now, even as they could hear their carriage ride coming to an end, and glimpse the lights of the upcoming party. "And despite your passion for justice, Jo, I'd very much like you not to paint a target on your back for the time being. So please, if you could simply decide to talk to Laurie and very few others tonight..."_

"I'll be very, very good," Jo sweetly promised, though Fred only accepted as much dubiously.

"I hope you are," he murmured, "because it seems as though we're finally at the moment of reckoning. Please don't 'famous last words' me!"

"Lead on, good sir," she said and grinned wholly unwholesomely. "I shall be nothing more than your follower for the evening." 

* * *

Which of course had to begin by Jo hopelessly losing sight of him thirty minutes into their entrance to the party.

For the first thirty minutes, she had kept her word, and been angelic enough to impress even Amy. Forcing herself to be almost unnaturally demure and charming, she had clung to Fred's sturdy arm like a besotted schoolgirl and been prepared to titter away the evening. Knowing her reputation as a hard-nosed reporter might well precede her, Jo had let expediency win over pride and batted her lashes for all they were worth, hoping that any of the men-- Maroni _especially_ included-- introduced to her might think that she was a piece of overrated fluff after all, and one whose plain face could well be overlooked for others at that, although her cleavage might prove a little more titillating. (For which Jo _still_ blamed Amy.) And so, though she seethed on the inside at how often the people at the party either overlooked her face for Fred's or (even worse) her face for her bosom, Jo had been prepared to let the evening pass with her gathering information and giggling inanely.

It was really amazing, Jo thought as she laughed brightly at something a businessman said as he stared into the depths of her dress, what some idiot men let slip when they thought a mere _woman_ might be listening.

Of course, it didn't hurt that the half-hour she spent with Fred seemed to show no sign whatsoever of Laurie either.

Eventually, however, disaster struck-- in the most unpredictable way possible. Jo had simply stepped away from Fred for a moment to visit the powder room, while he had vaguely gestured at her and told her he'd be waiting in the hall for her once she finished freshening up to serve as bait for God knows what other lecherous old men.

Unfortunately, Jo had ending up spending a little more time there than she had assumed she would-- such were the perils of listening in on what appeared to be a young woman of Maroni's bodyguard's acquaintance whimper about him not having quite as much time for her as he promised. (Rumors of that impending drug war that she had been fed by informants on the streets were getting more and more worrisome as the weeks passed.) In fact, almost another half-hour was spent in the powder room, with Jo pretending to primp and preen uselessly as the younger woman had moaned about her husband or lover or whoever he was coming home nearly at the crack of dawn some mornings from the docks, sometimes half-drenched from his work and always in enough a foul mood to alarm her.

She didn't regret the half-hour she spent in the room, although her stern sister probably would after seeing what a mess Jo had made of Amy's carefully styled curls after they were subjected to Jo's clumsy hands after a half-hour. But once she finally got out after deciding the younger woman had nothing more to tell her... Fred was nowhere to be seen.

Fred was nowhere to be seen but as Jo waited in the halls impatiently in the falls for him and turned her head at the sound of wild burst of laughter from the ballroom just beyond, she could see that someone else was.

Someone unexpected.

Someone exquisite.

Someone... _alarming._

Someone she had known in another life and who was now throwing the one she had made now into distraction once more.

Someone who made her breath catch and her knees tremble like the reflection of knees within water, for all that she had thought herself prepared for what what her eyes now took in as they widened almost painfully at the sight before her.

Wavy dark hair arranged upon a classical profile, slicked back from the brow in the Parisian style, shorter than it had been before. Piercing eyes that were dark and penetrating, their intensity palpable though they fell now on a trio of delicately pretty young creatures rather than on the frozen bystander who stared at him with her heart in her throat. A slender figure clad elegantly in fashionably dark apparel, taller than she remembered and even more graceful, with power and balance apparent in every gesture he made, no matter how extravagant or frivolous they might seem to be.

And a handsome face that she remembered-- oh God did she remember. In every dream, in every night, in every haunting that he had left her as he had fled her life so quickly.

Face bare, eyebrows thick, eyes dark, nose long, lips thin, cheekbones almost perilously high and sharp, looking almost strong enough to cut through the Mediterranean-dark skin of his cheeks...

He had to be almost thirty now, just as Jo was. But where age had only made her turn thinner and plainer, it had seemed to bring him even more energy and vitality, made him even more devastating to feminine sensibilities, had apparently broken him out of his once shy shell, had made him into--

_("if you refuse me once more, i will never speak to you again. not ever, no. do you hear me?_)

A stranger. A handsome, apparently still wealthy, but wholly unknown stranger. One with an entourage of swooning women and envious men that he never would have had were he still the boy that Jo had once known and loved, though she could not bring herself to accept his final offer to her, the one he had made to her as they had parted last with his hand over his broken heart.

The offer than even know she did not know if she should have accepted, even if she had known the exile on which a rejection would send him off.

But this was not that boy who had looked at her so long ago and offered himself over. This was a stranger, one who probably would look her over and wonder what on earth had happened to her over the years that he'd been gone, to turn a girl with so much hope and joy into such a cynical creature of the city and the dark.

A stranger, who she had nothing to do with and surely who would have nothing to do with her. Not when she had a city to try and safeguard and he had God only knew how many women to romance, in his new-found mantle of playboy that he had with no apparent effort donned on.

He was a stranger, alien to her and so unlike the lonely boy she had once befriended that the contrast to what stood flirting languidly before her now and what had fled her arms so many years passed almost seemed obscene. He was a stranger and she had been a fool if she had hoped to see once more-- even in the slightest way imaginable-- the boy she had once cared for, in order to make amends to him for everything.

Clearly there were no amends to make, if the lordy, self-satisfied look on Laurie's face as he was surrounded by swooning women and sycophantic men meant anything.

There were no amends to make and thus, no reason to speak. After all, interviews with the sort of millionaire playboy that Laurie had apparently turned into could be done by damn near everybody.

She wasn't needed here.

But even as Jo turned away to walk further into the darkness of the halls, to the exit doors to wait for Fred to eventually find her, she learned that even her exit strategy was not about to go in the way that she had planned-- just like everything else this evening.

For another man blocked her path, his eyes just as intense on her as Laurie's had once been, in another life and on another evening, left deliberately unvisited in her mind for so many years. And though he did not affect her quite as powerfully as Laurie did, the sight of the almost femininely pretty and angular face lurking behind dark glasses did strike a similar chord of loathing-- though this was a variety far more directed at him than herself.

After all, it wasn't every day that Jo found herself trapped in a narrow hall with no one but a corrupt psychological doctor who she suspected was torturing his patients and providing alibis for the mob and Salvatore Maroni.

When Amy had told her that she might as well make an impression on a man this evening, Jo was quite certain that this was not what her beloved sister had meant.

At any other time, Jo might have thought this a golden, if skin-crawling opportunity indeed. At any other moment, she might have thought that even if she had to be placed in severe discomfort because of this conversation, at least it had the possibility of raking up more than old emotional wounds for herself, such as more information on what the mob was planning. At any other evening, she might have grinned at the thought that the man who stood before her might very well underestimate her... which always led to a few good openings.

But right now, all she wanted to do was get away from this place as soon as possible. And all her usual calculations crumbled to dust as she tried desperately to figure out a way to extract herself from the present situation without giving away the source of her fear.

She couldn't afford to show her weak spots, let alone to the vermin before her. Not now, never again, and certainly not here. So she did her best to strand up straight and flash a curved smile at her interrogator that suggested everything was, as usual, absolutely under her control presently.

Men like him fed off of fear, she knew that much. So she needed to be severe.

"Hello, Dr. Crane," she said coolly, controlling the repulsion in her tone tightly. "Or should I say... Jonathan? What can I do for you this evening?"

* * *

In the line of the dangerous line of work that Jo had been actively engaged in for the last seven years, she had long since come to learn that there were only two types of men who actively sought out her company.

First there came the schemers, the wheelers and the dealers, the men who thought that either she herself or her link to the only half-way honest newspaper in New York was worth exploiting. She took no personal pleasure in dealing with these men, who seemed to multiply by the night, who seemed to take a little too much pleasure in seeing her subtly degraded on _this_ night, and who usually treated her as though she ought to be barefoot and pregnant in a kitchen somewhere rather than trying to make the world a better place through her own deeds. And yet, even though the thought of these men made Jo roll her eyes on her better days and spit like a camel on her worse ones, they were far worse than the _other_ sort of men who tended to flock to her...

Men like the ones who so often seemed to become obsessed with her and the bizarre bud of celebrity that sometimes alighted on her. Men who thought they could "save" her by taking her away from the necessary work she loved. Men who thought they could intrigue her by tossing bricks through her windows in order to make her seek them out in God only knew what dark corner.

And men who made her feel rather like a wild rat cornered and penned in by a force that mean no good to her whatsoever.

Men like the one standing right before her.

In response to her question, Dr. Jonathan Crane, the newest man in charge of what Jo considered the latest travesty in the criminal justice system-- New York's new Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane-- lightly lifted his frames from his elegant, sharp-boned face, fanned another hand through his sleek dark hair, and smiled in a way that might have made other women swoon but made Jo's stomach clench hard.

"If I had known," he began, the syllables rolling urbanely off his serpent's tongue, "that you would be featured at this party, my dear Ms. March, I would have engineered a meeting between us much sooner."

Jo unclenched her teeth long enough to flash a light, tight grin at him, one not in the least meant to charm. "On that matter," she replied coldly, "I have no doubt."

Crane actually had the nerve to throw his head back and laugh at that, as though she had inadvertently charmed him somehow. "And in turn, I have no doubts about your doubt! Tell me, Miss March... this persistent air of paranoia that you have about you... Does it only manifest around me and my projects or do you also gift other men with the suspicion you're subjecting me to now?"

Jo smiled again, only her years on the job giving her enough control over her emotions to keep from walking away and causing a scene in front of the crowd that milled just behind them... a scene that might bring eyes that she decidedly did not want to encounter on her. "Well, I do work as a reporter for the only halfway decent paper in the city, Dr. Crane. Wouldn't you imagine that a certain level of... oh, shall we say... antisocial alarm to the skin crawlers that populate our fair city be beneficial to keeping my skin on?"

And before his thin lips could even properly tighten into a frown, she lifted her hand to her mouth, gave a false little gasp and murmured, "Not that I'm referring to anyone in _this_ gathering, of course. All the fair gentlemen and women in this manse surely wouldn't do little old me any harm."

From the glint of his eyes shining beneath the rim of his glasses, Jo knew that last sentence might have been overstating it. But before she could simper out another apology and move beyond him in search of a way out, Dr. Crane moved closer to her once more, blocking her exit, ignoring her attempts to flee, and bending over her to a degree she felt was wholly unnecessary.

Anyone who cared to duck into the hallway just then might have thought them lovers more than adversaries.

Anyone.

"Even if they did," Crane replied, his lips unfurling into a near reptilian smile, "I doubt you'd even find yourself overly alarmed. That courage of yours, madame, seems to find a way to rise up to nearly every occasion it's tested on."

Jo bit back a curse and the urge to look back, and see if anyone was moving toward them even as Crane wove valuable minutes of her life away with his inane patter. Instead, determined to look as composed as Amy at her finest, she simply lifted her chin up and smiled, as though speaking to the mob-controlled insect before her were not in the least a bother.

"Cowards don't make terribly long-lasting reporters, Dr. Crane. And they certainly don't tend to hurl around accusations that they believe they can't back up with a thorough investigation either. Which reminds me..."

And this time, it was _she_ who leaned forward, her lips dipping to his ear as though they were engaged in a dance together, although the chill in her words would have belied any intimacy whatsoever.

"...Do tell me, doctor, how are your latest patients faring? It's amazing how so many men caught up in the underground muck of the drug trade somehow manage to fall into psychiatric disorders as soon as the law finds a way to catch them after all."

Some part of her had hoped that perhaps Crane's God Complex might ave become offended enough at her insinuations to finally move away from her. However, her hopes were doomed to be dashed, and instead of crawling away to lap at his wounds, Crane only seemed to come closer, necessitating a step back from her.

"I find it quite explicable, actually," he murmured, his eyes lowering as they caught on hers. "After all, men who fall into the criminal underworld don't tend to be all that stable in the first place... although one wonders what implications that holds for the people who then follow and report on them. Gaze not into the abyss--"

"--Unless you want to hear trite quotations," Jo snapped, cutting him off. "And if the people who report on them might be termed frightening, I wonder what we can say about those who _medicate_ them. Especially with the heavy hand _you_ use, sir."

The smile he now wore on his face made her blood run sour.

"My hand isn't always heavy, Miss March," he whispered, and how the _hell_ did he keep slithering so close to her without her even realizing it? "I take pride in knowing when to use a soft touch."

Jo wanted to take another step back, wanted to look away, wanted to know if anyone was watching the two of them now.

She stood where she was as though rooted, her eyes never wavering from Crane's.

Men like him, they fed on fear. And she wanted to be strong.

"Oh really?" she said, throwing back her dark hair, feeling curl already beginning to loosen and fall. "Such as when you manage to get your judges to send each and every one of Maroni's men to Arkham Asylum instead of prison? Would that be a good example of as much?"

Crane clucked a tongue she rather wished she could detach permanently. "Such suspicion in the newspaper industry! I must say, dear Miss March, this is the worst interview I have ever taken part of."

"Oh, and it's been so entertaining for me," Jo sneered. "Truly, you've carried me away with your silver-tongued charm."

Then, as one last addendum before she stormed off, she gave a soft, mocking laugh and then leaned her neck forward a little, letting her hard gaze meet his languid one.

"Tell me, what does Maroni give you in exchange for you whoring your expertise out? All the drugs and whores and test subjects you could possibly want? What price is integrity in this city? And have you been paid well enough to leverage your soul right off?"

She meant to pull back after she whispered her words, and saw the top of Crane's elegant cheekbones grow red with heat and anger. But before she could move, she suddenly felt herself held fast to him with his wrists against her shoulders, clasping her tight with surprising strength, until she realized she couldn't buck him off without all too much effort.

And when she turned her head to angrily tell him to get his hands off her, the expression she saw in his usually blandly handsome face made her mouth dry out.

"Oh, you are fearless, aren't you?" he whispered, and the strange fervor in his tone could mean nothing good for her. "To come here, in this place, with these people before you... to come here and meet me and tell me all that you've done..."

She narrowed her eyes at him, her voice going arctic. "If you don't let me go in a matter of seconds, Crane, I am going to do something _very_ unpleasant to you and your trousers."

Crane simply laughed again, and ghosted one of his thin, narrow hands across her cheekbones, watching with disturbing enthusiasm as she fought a shudder. "So much courage in you... and so little _fear_. Tell me, is it something intrinsic in you or something you had to build up?"

Jo swallowed a retort about what he'd have to build up after she was done with him and instead, attempted to jerk away, narrowing her eyes when he refused to let go. "I swear, Crane, if you don't stop man-handling me _right now_..."

"You'll what?" he said, and tilted his head, looking nearly curious. "Cause a scene? You could have done it as soon as you met me... and you probably would have, under most circumstances. It almost makes me think that that much vaunted courage of yours might well be evading something-- or some_body_-- now."

Oh God, if Laurie came, if _Laurie_ saw them together--

"You wouldn't, would you?" Crane said, almost wondering, and Jo bit back a frustrated growl. "You wouldn't because you're... you're evading..."

His eyes flicked to the corner of his glasses.

His smile grew a little wider.

"Is there something even the fearless Miss March fears?" Crane wondered aloud, his voice now carrying even as his damnable hand kept touching her face and fingers began working their way up her stiff jaw. "It makes me wonder if, somehow--"

But what Crane was wondering would have to remain a mystery for the ages, for Jo-- finally having had more than _enough_-- decided to take the opportunity to clamp one of her hands around her interloper's sadistic mouth, bring one of her knees up to _slam_ against that spot on his trousers she had warned him again--

And then, as soon as he fell down with a whimper she brutally stifled with her palm, shake one of her fingers at his prone body as it went down with only a little more noise than she felt comfortable with.

"I'd like to say that hurt me more than it hurt you," Jo told Crane's whimpering body dryly, already gathering up her skirts for a good run down out of the mansion and into the stables. "But that would simply be a lie. I actually enjoyed that a lot."

And then, even before she could confirm whether or not there Crane really _had_ been looking at someone lingering over her shoulder for the last few seconds, having discovered why she had _truly_ wanted to flee from him, she took a step forward and was gone.

* * *

As Jo all but fled from the mansion the party was still raging on in toward the stable, only one coherent thought managed to emerge from the wild mess gathering in her mind.

And the thought was as followed.

_Why_, she wondered in despair as the ridiculous collection of ruffles that Amy had gathered around her at the start of the evening kept trying to trip her at her brisk pace, _do all the mad men of the city seem determined to come after me?!_

It wasn't in the least unheard of in the newspaper business, to be fair. Her fellow newsies, especially those who covered the world of organized and spectacularly corrupt and wealthy criminals as she did, often ended up having strange and sometimes quite demented stalkers on their trail. (Although they did have the advantage on her that being men, at least they usually only had to deal with giddy and largely harmless women-- and Jo knew more than a few of them took more advantage _of_ than were preyed _upon_.)

Jo, on the other hand, was the sole female left in New York in her line of work, now that Nellie Bly had gone off to chase the winds of the world. And apparently, there were just enough lunatics left in the city that decided switching over from the far more aesthetically pleasing Nellie Bly to the plainer and even more abrasive Jo March was worth the 'taming of the shrew'-esque trade-off... hence the reason why a rock had apparently come sailing through her once pristine kitchen window a few mornings ago and why... why...

If Jo stopped on her frantic trip to the stables to take refuge from the night, it was only to shudder, grimace, shake her head and wonder how on God's green Earth she had somehow converted one of the most morally repulsive men she knew into an admirer.

Though truth be told, she decided as she rubbed at the jaw he had been groping just a bit earlier, maybe calling Dr. Jonathan Crane-- patsy for the mob and probably tormentor of all the genuinely sick souls in New York's Arkham Asylum-- an _admirer_ was dulling the horror of what had just happened to her. More than anything, he had looked at her as though she were some shiny new specimen for him to toy with, as he had apparently toyed with so many of the poor inmates she had glimpsed as she had gone undercover for her last story on how illicit affiliations had specifically financed the building of Crane's personal playground. And _that_, more than anything, had wholly repulsed and unnerved Jo.

After all, if it had just been admiration glinting at her from beneath Crane's expensive frame, she would have been able to handle it. She'd thrown off unwanted admirers before, and she usually didn't need to resort to physical harm to accomplish as much either. She could have yelled or caused a commotion or-- or--

Or done something that would inevitably bring in bystanders. Bystanders who might ask what she was doing. Bystanders who might want to

(_catch up?_)

No.

Bystanders, she told herself firmly, her hands fisting by her side, who might think she was snooping around. Bystanders who might spread the word that she oughtn't be a guest in such fancy quarters. Bystanders who might think that she and Dr. Crane had had an... altercation, when she most needed to put a harmless front forward.

It was so much better that she had simply run from such an encounter, really. It didn't mean she was a coward.

_But,_ some awful, mocking voice in Jo spoke up, _that isn't exactly why you're running away from the party, is it? You're Jo March, after all. You didn't get into your current profession because you like to **run.**_

_No, the truth's a lot stranger, isn't it? You haven't been yourself for the last few days at all, have you? And you know why, even if you won't admit it._

_It all boils down to one reason, after all._

_One reason. One name. One man._

_And one night where you destroyed a friend who never did you any harm._

(oh god)

By the time she finally stumbled to the stables to wait for Fred to eventually come and find her-- it had long been a rendezvous point for the both of them when they lost each other in one of these endless social events-- Jo felt far more exhausted than she ought to have. This evening had somehow taken more out of her than even nights when she had had to trail mob cabs around on foot as best as she could to make sense of where their increasingly frequent drug shipments were being moved around. Right now, Jo wished she could trade her finery and fancy surroundings for a decent pair of trousers and the good, clean muck of the streets, where the worst that would happen would be someone trying to kill her.

...Jo then replayed that last thought in her head, put her face in her hands and sighed.

God. When had she become such an idiot? And all for the sake of one man who had clearly-- _very_ clearly-- gotten over that one impossible and utterly irresponsible evening that they had spent together before he had left her life for what had turned out to be far greater pleasures abroad?

_Actually,_ that nasty voice in her head whispered again, _you should really ask yourself if you ever **stopped** being one when he's around._

"Oh shut up you," Jo hissed aloud, paused, and then smacked herself across the face when she realized she had begun talking to herself. God help her if anyone caught her like this-- she might end up in Crane's clutches in Arkham Asylum after all.

It was thought enough to make her fall into a full-body shudder all over again-- although luckily, this time, she found herself being interrupted by the sound of faithful Fred's steady steps as he walked toward her.

Dear Fred. Dear, good, kind, _honest_ Fred. She knew that all she'd have to do was tell him what had happened with Crane-- omitting the _real_ reason she'd run-- and he'd do everything in his power to whisk her away. Thank God for Fred, in all his gentle, heart-broken kindness, as wonderful as any possible brother. Thank God he'd take her side in any confrontation, no matter how strange it might appear to others.

A gentle hand came down to rest on her shoulder, the grip a little more shaky than she remembered. Sighing gently, Jo closed her eyes and let herself rest for a second longer.

"Thank you for coming," she began sincerely, her weariness clear simply through her vocal chords. "I swear, you wouldn't _believe_ what that hideous pus-rag Crane attempted on me, to my eternal indignation and horror! God, Fred, the horrors of memory I could subject you to in our carriage while we head off..."

A laugh rang out. A laugh she did and did not recognize, accompanied by a voice she had heard fading in and out of her dreams for the last decade, even before he had gone.

And even before Jo turned around, she knew she had ended up committing the most ridiculous mistake the night had in store for her now.

"I'm not Fred," Theodore Laurence said, and his long-loved voice was even deeper than she remembered, the voice of a man and not merely a boy on the cusp of something far darker. "And if anything, I ought to thank _you_ for coming, and allowing me the first sight of something I had, for so many years, nearly thought lost. After all..."

And when he sighed himself, Jo found her treacherous head turning to gaze into eyes that were even darker and brilliant than she remembered from the night they had spent with one another...

Oh, she had been so right to _run._ How was she to know he'd be quick enough to catch up with ease?

"It's nice to finally feel as though I may be home again," Laurie said, and the smile that accompanied his words did not look harmless in the least.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Please do leave a review for your friendly neighborhood fanfic writer if you're reading this series. It really gives me motivation to keep my fickle self at work on Reporter!Jo and Bat!Laurie!

In any case, I cannot _wait_ to get cracking on the next chapter. Thanks to my brilliant friend **Madwomanpoems** (who is co-writing a Newsies/Little Women crossover called Falling Up with me that puts Jack Kelly and Jo March together), it's coming together very, very nicely. Hopefully, it'll be ready for a public unveiling in another two weeks.

Plus, my lovely friend Potix, who made me that brilliant banner, also requested an AU smut fic between Jo and Bat!Laurie for this series, which I hope to also put up in a few weeks. So keep an eye for that... and let me know if you have any scenarios in mind for how that could play out. The kinkier, the better. ;)


	4. Interlude 1

This weekend, I had originally planned to put up the final chapter of A Night to Remember and let poor Laurie (after waiting approximately 3,283 weeks) consummate his marriage with Jo at last. Unfortunately, it seems as though most of the Little Women fandom is on vacation right now and since it would break my heart to finish my first LW series and have very few people read, I'm shelving ANTR for a few more weeks. Hopefully, everyone will be back in September and it'll be up then!

But in the meantime, I wanted to put up a snippet of the Dark Scribe Begins series. I actually wrote this as a lead-in to a NC-17 rated one-shot for my friend Potix that featured more bondage than you can shake Bat!Laurie's stick at. Unfortunately, that one-shot never really came together... but I liked the beginning enough to post as-is. Think of this as a hint of how Jo's future with Bat!Laurie will proceed. ;)

**Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Interlude  
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight  
Series: Dark Scribe Begins  
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast  
Rating: R  
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...  
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. Jo March takes the place of Rachel Dawes, with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence standing in for Bruce Wayne. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.**

* * *

"The next time we meet," Jo began almost tenderly, "I want you to do me hard."

She could almost feel a blush beginning to color her face as soon as the words first slithered out from beneath her usually spinsterish lips, feeling as they were nearly enough to singe her as they fell from her once-prim mouth. If anyone had asked her even a week ago if she thought she'd soon find herself on the roof of her workplace, using language of the filthiest sort of communicate with a vigilante who often looked as though he wanted to snap her in half just to demonstrate her ardor, she would have thought him or her mad enough to be treated by Jonathan Crane.

But unfortunately, circumstances changed and people had to change with them. And every since the Batman had swooped quite literally into her life, she had had to learn to accommodate... no matter how strange the circumstances around him became.

Which was why she was now looking up at him through the fringe of her lashes, undoing her evening coat so she could reveal the ridiculously risque dress even Amy had stared at when she'd donned it, trying to look less as though she were passing information onto public enemy number one than to look as though she were meeting with a very, very eccentric man for a tawdry rendezvous when she thought no one was looking.

As the Dark Knight himself had pointed out, one never knew who could be watching. And the more they thought Jo easily neutralized through blackmail later, the better off they both were.

So Jo smiled again, lifted her eyebrows up at him, and murmured words that would have made her Marmee disown her if she saw what her darling daughter now doing.

"Please," she forced herself to beg, her lips flattening against the word's stressed syllables. "Please, darling, I need to tonight. I need it like I need you _now_."

A flicker in the darkness and Jo fought back a shiver as she thought she caught a smile.

Sometimes she had to wonder if the Batman got a little _too_ much enjoyment out of what she did for him just then.

"How hard?" he murmured, and his voice was smooth. "And how long will you give me, and how much will you be receiving, and how far will you go with me now?"

Bastard.

He really _was_ enjoying this too much now.

But instead of taking her shoe and throwing it at his infuriating and oh-so-mysterious skull, Jo raised her face up to his as though she were pleading with him. "Anything you want me. Anything you need! All you need to do is ask and..."

She tried to look flushed more with passion than shame, although anyone watching might think it a close call.

"Any part of me as well," she said, huskily, and tried not to think that she saw too much pleasure in the the dark figure who now wore the night to hide as easily as he usually wore his cowl.

But then, if he was mad enough to dress in form-fitting leather and fight the mob night after night without the help of a single bullet, he might be mad enough to be enjoying this now.

Instead of answering her, however, he contented himself with bringing her forward with his index finger and then gestured for her to turn around with the merest flick of his thumb. Careful to keep her eyes down-- his insistence on his privacy had long been one of his sticking points-- Jo came toward him and then turned around to gaze at the entrance to the roof on the Daily Sun she had just come from. She made sure to make her movements serene and just a little on the edge of a tremble, as though she were so tense and willing for him, she might well snap like a twig just now.

Not that that was the case, of course. Jo was sure she had much too much control over herself to ever, ever, _ever_ want for something so dangerous and so, so, _so_ clearly terrible for her now.

Which was why she didn't even shudder as she felt the man she knew only behind a mask place his hands on her hips and bury his face in her unbound curls. After all, he was surely only doing it to lower visibility on his face as well, since by now Jo knew that he proved superb at using the environment around him toward his own strange goals.

And if one of his hands were on his hips and the other was curving just below her small, trembling breasts...

Well, that was just getting into the act. She could blame him for a great many _other_ things but not this... and not now.

"How much do you want me?" he whispered, and Jo fought back the sudden shiver that stretched all the way from the top of her spine to the edges of her thighs, knowing it meant nothing at all.

Though really, letting his fingers ghost down her stomach to the tops of those same thighs was a bit too much. From his attempts at dress-up, Jo knew that this Batman liked to get into character but this was going a _little_ far.

And if her hand fell on top of his not to arrest it to but press it to her inner thighs and let him feel the way the silky skin there trembled...

Well, it wasn't as though she wanted to risk her life on a shoddy acting job.

"I want you," Jo murmured, and then, even as she led his fingers up against the very soft, soft edges of her most intimate parts, whispered: "to take down Maroni once and for all."

He chuckled and without his mask in the way, she could feel his breath fall quick on her, his lips soft as they touched the nape of her neck as he worked his way across.

"You know, I've always enjoyed women who know what they want."

"Then you must love me," Jo murmured dryly, although she kept her face dreamy and lost as she led his fingers against her covered skin, not letting his bare fingertips quite touch her cleft but hovering just above it now. "And thankfully, I think we might have some information tonight to let us _both_ have what we want."

"Indeed?" he whispered, and his laugh hit the side of her throat and trailed down her treacherous spine as she felt his lips move against her. "Though I suppose it's lovely that you don't lack for confidence either. When shall our rendezvous be then, lovely?"

Jo smiled, a little less dreamily and a little more sharply, feeling herself come alive at the thought of what would happen soon enough.

"The usual time," she whispered, and then crooked her own wicked smile up at him, though her eyes were still shut. "Don't forget to bring the blindfolds."

"Never," the Batman promised, his voice amused even through the ridiculous rasp he habitually used. "Neither that nor the handcuffs either."

Which was her cue to wriggle away, her hips pressed deliciously against his for an instant before she pushed off, and then give him once last sweet smile over her shoulder. After all, Jo had always wanted to be an actress when she was younger and now, she had learned enough to put one hell of a performance on.

"Don't keep me waiting," she murmured in her finale and, after sauntering away back to the relative safety of the roof's entrance, blew a kiss at the half-hidden man who might as well be a lover for any watching them currently.

* * *

**Author's Note**: As always, reviews are much loved by me! Also, dearest Poti, I _promise_ that I'll finish your sexy, sexy one-shot by next weekend. Jo and Laurie are already at the piano... Jo just needs some inspiration to start climbing on top it and start writhing. ;)


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